Research On The Principles Of Making And Designing Of The Course Book Of College English

This dissertation is motivated by the following concerns: whether the principles of making and designing English course books for college students follow the cognitive development and cognitive style of the modern college students? Whether the principles reflect the needs of the college students' career development and knowledge structure of their major field? Whether the principles of tasks and exercises designing have made the course books available, versatile and practicable? Whether the teaching and learning resources offered by the course book designers have made them more convenient for the teachers and learners? It is based on the exploration of theses concerns that we have conducted text analysis and a survey of course books in use on two most influential course books: New Horizon from the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and College English (New Edition) from the Shanghai Foreign Language Teaching Press.The working principle of this dissertation begins with the assumption that the editing principles of course books constraint the contents of language use and language usage, the designing of the language tasks concerning skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. It then follows to the fact the course books so developed would further condition and shape the characteristics in the course of using by teachers and learners. Based on the results of text analysis and the survey, a set of principles in making and developing college English course books have been proposed.This dissertation is composed of five parts, with the first of which emphasizing the necessity and statusquo of the study of principles in making college English course books and a reflection on the problems of the present studies.The second part illustrates the ideal content selection, presentation and structure of college English course books and the orientation in designing and developing them. The proposition is that the major function of modern college English books is both as a tool and a resource, and the essential consideration in making an appropriate course book should be directed toward three aspects as the value orientation, goal setting and the presentation of the course book.The third part conducts the text analysis of the two chosen course books. The dimension of content presentation and selection mainly concerns the language usage (including pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar) and language use (including listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating), while the dimension of course book designing is about the types and procession of each units.The fourth part is a survey of the application of these two course books in college. Based on the results of the survey, we concluded the drawbacks of the course book in applying them in classrooms and the possible reasons for these problems.The last part is the four tentative conclusions drawn from the analysis and survey: the principle of facilitating students' career development, the principle of appropriate understanding of language and language learning; the principle of promoting cross-cultural understanding, and the principle of diversifying the units and organization of college English books.